<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Such (a) Dic(k)tion || Tsukishima Kei by Rot_Llaves</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24082627">Such (a) Dic(k)tion || Tsukishima Kei</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rot_Llaves/pseuds/Rot_Llaves'>Rot_Llaves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aged-Up Character(s), Confessions, F/M, Friendship, He also doesn't know how to flirt, Love Confessions, Mild Language, Power of Words, Rejection, Tsukki is a dick sometimes, Who says that about blush?, Words matter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:28:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24082627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rot_Llaves/pseuds/Rot_Llaves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"In a few years a girl might not remember who her lab partner in high school was, but she sure as hell is going to remember when someone told her that the way she eats is repulsive enough to make men vomit."</p><p>Tsukishima stopped walking as he thought over the words. He hadn't remembered using that phrasing in high school and he found himself wondering just which rejection that had been and why he didn't remember it. <em>Had a woman's love really been so inconsequential?</em></p><p>"I don't recall saying that," he said coolly as he went back to walking, trying to play the moment off.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tsukishima Kei/Original Female Character(s), Tsukishima Kei/Original Female Character(s)/Yamaguchi Tadashi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ace of Hearts - Haikyuu || Short Stories || One Shots || Creative Rambles || [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720834</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Such (a) Dic(k)tion || Tsukishima Kei</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are some things you can discern about people from the very first moment you meet them. Like, you can tell how much a person values themselves, and the way people think of them, based on how often they clean their hair or how honest of a person they are based on a smile.</p><p>The first time Mori Satoko laid eyes on Tsukishima Kei she knew he was a dick.</p><p>But maybe he was a dick with more to offer than just his flaccid, unfavorable personality.</p><p>It had taken Satoko nearly 10 months to find anything redeeming about the tall, walking salt shaker and, even then, the discovery had been purely accidental.</p><p>She had walked into the gym on a mission to find Hitoka-san to give her the notes from a class she missed the day before due to club activities. The meeting between the two honors students had been brief and littered with one sided, over-zealous appreciation - to the point where Satoko was forced into accepting an invitation to an upcoming practice match with the promise of free dinner at the end (since Hitoka was far too busy helping the team prepare for nationals to spare any other time for a thank you).</p><p>That game against Date Tech was probably the first time Satoko saw Tsukishima ever put effort into something and it was both incredible and frustrating. Without wanting to, she suddenly became interested in him — wondering what he could accomplish if he put his all into something and bemoaning that the cocky shit actually had something he was good at.</p><p>Satoko knew better — she really did — but when the game ended, she couldn't resist poking the bear.</p><p>"I like the way you insult your teammates in just the right way that it motivates them to spite you," she said walking straight up to him as the briefest glimmer of interest passed over his face. "It's really kind of clever."</p><p>
  <em>Did this short, unkempt bookworm really just see right through him?</em>
</p><p>"Oh, so you like me," he questioned, his tone without a doubt teasing. It was a lame comeback and they both knew it.</p><p>"Never mind, you aren't clever at all," she responded flatly before turning on her heel and exiting the gym.</p><p>Honestly, Satoko hadn't meant to start anything. She had briefly given into a faint interest and thought that would be it, but after those two small comments, Tsukishima had made it his personal mission to piss her off.</p><p>That brief lack of self control propelled her into a little more than two years of biting words, flippant comebacks and possibly the strangest friendship she could have imagined for herself — stuck between a boy who let everyone walk all over him and a titan who tore everyone around him down.</p><p>In the face of her plans to leave behind her responsibilities of Yamaguchi protector and as that tall asshole's salt-talk translator, fate laughed wholeheartedly.</p><p>Without even talking to each other, the three of them had applied, been accepted and enrolled at the same university, thus tying their futures together for at least another four years. (Though, honestly, Yamaguchi and Tsukishima had spoken at length with each other about their academic futures, Satoko had been purposefully vague about her options, which had come back to bite her.)</p><p>Which is how, in the midst of their second year at college, the three found themselves walking together back to their dorms, after a particularly long lecture about supply and demand, talking about their weekend plans to binge bad romantic comedies together — or, at least, Yamaguchi and Satoko were. Tsukishima was trailing behind them, hands in his pockets and headphones around his neck, looking at the sky and trying not to roll his eyes at his excitable friends.</p><p>They'd barely made it two minutes into their walk before a girl in a sundress jogged up to them, calling to Tsukishima, with her long brown hair blowing behind her. She grabbed at his sleeve gently, pulling him away from his two friends and whispered to him, leaving Yamaguchi and Satoko to wait nearby.</p><p>Together they made awkward conversation about how long their tall friend would last before rejecting. Yams had faith in his friend and said Tsukki would make it through the entire confession, Satoko gave him three sentences, max.</p><p>Victory went to the latter as the blonde cut off the girl in front of him with a raise of his hand and a sharp "stop" from his mouth. Perhaps it had been the long lecture from before, or maybe it was even just the mere thought of being trapped in a room with two idiots as they watched bogus love stories for hours, but something had severely irritated Tsukishima to the point where he didn't bother with an "I'm sorry" or even a simple "thank you, but." Instead he went for the kill shot.</p><p>"I could never date someone with a voice so irritatingly high pitched as yours," he said. "A man would be cursed to have to listen to that voice every day."</p><p>He'd hardly been quiet and his two friends looked on with visible disappointment as they watched the poor girl's eyes fill and then overflow before she turned and ran.</p><p>Tsukishima lazily walked toward the other two, his hands never having left his pockets, and moved past their unapproving faces as if nothing had occurred at all. After five steps forward, he looked over his shoulder and asked them if they were coming or not.</p><p>Satoko immediately shot forward and elbowed the giant in the side with a frown on her face.</p><p>"Honestly Tsukishima," she said, her tone incredibly serious. "You should think more about the way you insult the women around you. Especially those freakish ones who like you."</p><p>"I don't see why I should have to," he responded flatly.</p><p>Satoko released an exaggerated sigh before chewing her lip in concentration. She had to choose her words carefully.</p><p>"Look, I don't want to stand here and say that women are weak, because you and I both know they're not. But there is something especially fragile about a woman with stars in her eyes and you have a <em>particularly</em> harsh way of taking the light from their skies," she said, giving the tall blonde an honest stare.</p><p>"I'm free to reject someone however I please," he remarked, voice still flat. "It's hardly my fault they're not prepared for rejection."</p><p>"But that's just it," she cut in quickly. "It's not the rejection that leaves them reeling. It's the snide comments you make to tear them down. In a few years a girl might not remember who her lab partner in high school was, but she sure as hell is going to remember when someone told her that the way she eats is repulsive enough to make men vomit."</p><p>Tsukishima stopped walking as he thought over the words. He hadn't remembered using that phrasing in high school and he found himself wondering just which rejection that had been and why he didn't remember it. <em>Had a woman's love really been so inconsequential?</em></p><p>"I don't recall saying that," he said coolly as he went back to walking, trying to play the moment off.</p><p>"That's what I'm saying, Tsukki," she yelled and he sent her a glare for both her tone and the nickname. "You might not remember it, but words like have a lasting impact on a girl. I doubt there's hardly a time that poor Tani-san eats in public and doesn't overthink the way she places food in her mouth.</p><p>"And don't even get me started on your rejection of Mino-san! Even I can't get over you telling her that the blush she was using 'reeked of desperation.' Who says that about blush Tsukishima? You're such a dick. <em>And it was a nice brand too... I bet all that money went to waste</em>."</p><p>Her words faded off at the end as her train of thought gradually derailed and despite the lecture, Tsukishima began wondering when Satoko started paying so much attention. But, now was hardly the time to ponder such things. He had an argument to win.</p><p>"Shouldn't those girls have known what they were in for," he mocked. "After all, they claimed to like me."</p><p>"Maybe they just see more in you than you can," she mused, her reply almost nonchalant.</p><p>"Well pardon me for not living up to a fantasy," he spat.</p><p>"You know, sometimes I feel like you really need to get more in touch with your feminine side," she grumbled.</p><p>"Tsukki doesn't have a feminine side," Yamaguchi piped up from behind them, re-alerting both of them to his presence.</p><p>"Could have fooled me," she mumbled. "He's on his man period often enough."</p><p>They stood and bickered with smiles on their faces for far longer than they should have - both obtaining far too much joy from eliciting a rise out of the other. In fact, it took Yamaguchi working up enough nerve to step between them and remind them that they were in public, in the middle of the sidewalk, to finally make them stop and continue on toward their residence hall in relative silence.</p><p>Despite her living on another floor, Yamaguchi nearly always insisted that the boys walk her to her room and as they exited the stairwell and started down the hall toward her door, Satoko decided to tease her blonde friend once again, knowing she would have a quick escape.</p><p>"I can't wait to see one of those girls fluster you one day," she said with a toothy smile. "And I can't wait to see you flounder about in love."</p><p>Tsukishima shot her a disgusted look and clicked his tongue.</p><p>"That's never going to happen," he said flatly. "I highly doubt I'll ever be a fool in love."</p><p>"That's a shame," she responded, taking in his words with a frown. "It feels great to be in love."</p><p>"What could come from being hopelessly in love, though? There's hardly a bigger fall than falling out of love — in the end, love can only hurt you," he stated, as if there were nothing truer than his words, but at this point he didn't even know if he believed what he was saying, or if he was just trying to piss her off.</p><p>Either way, his statement had done the intended.</p><p>"Despite what you may think, it's not a weakness to love someone, Tsukishima. In fact, I think loving someone despite the odds, and in the face of the fact that it may not work out, makes a person incredibly strong," Satoko said softly, stopping in front of her door. "But I don't think you have that kind of strength."</p><p>A weird contortion overtook Tsukishima's face briefly as he felt something that seemed deeper than just plain insult. In rare form, he didn't have a comeback ready to roll off of his razor-sharp tongue and he had to stop himself from just clicking it against the roof of his mouth. The lack of response gave Satoko room to continue.</p><p>"You're terrible at giving something your all. You're the worst at being a good friend and if you don't stop using insults as your only terms of endearment or encouragement you're going to lose everyone close to you — including Tadashi."</p><p>Satoko turned to open her door and then looked back at him with a hardened stare.</p><p>"And when that happens, I hope you don't expect the woman you said had 'thighs so fat they suffocate anything beneath them' to come and hear you out. She's already tired from years of making apologies for you."</p><p>With that Satoko closed the door to her dorm and left the pair of boys outside the hallway with round, confused eyes.</p><p><em>Was this whole thing really just about the thigh comment</em>, he thought. <em>That was supposed to be a compliment!</em></p><p>"Tsukki, you really need to learn how to flirt," Yamaguchi deadpanned.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I have such a love/hate relationship with Tsukishima's character. heh.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>